"Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion."

~R.A. Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996

by Hari Heath

We are mind control subjects. This is hard to believe because we pride ourselves on our independence and self-control. But we have been subjected to a barrage of "programming" our entire lives and are, therefore, mind control subjects—whether we like to admit it or not.

If you are activistically inclined to expose the lies, fraud and deceit commonly purveyed by the mouthpieces of government, industry and the media, you have no doubt encountered that glassy-eyed-stare from people who are well-entrenched in our present societal matrix. Out of polite unbelief they stare at you with their minds in neutral. Their programming does not compute with the information you are presenting.

Much to their chagrin, denial and disbelief, they are mind controlled. It is difficult to reach out to them. It is even more difficult to penetrate the walls in their minds, erected by their governors.

Among the predominant definitions of "govern," is the word "control." "Consent of the governed" is the basis of government, whether it is the willing assent to the most wholesome of laws necessary for a just society or the more common coercion, corruption or outright force applied to the subjects of government. Achieving consent is the purpose of mind control.

Beginnings

Sun Tzu (400-430 B.C.) authored The Art of War detailing many methods to dominate opponents and achieve victory by military and other means. Among his notable quotes is, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

Today Sun Tzu’s observation can be translated into "manufacturing consent."

The antiquity of manufacturing and controlling consent is demonstrated in the ancient Indian text, Arthashastra (Arthasâstra), written by Chanakya (350 - 283 B.C.), a professor of political science at Takshashila University. This 15-volume set is a treatise on statecraft and economic policy which discusses how to spread propaganda and apply it in warfare, among other things.

Roger Boesche describes it as, "A book of political realism, a book analyzing how the political world does work and not very often stating how it ought to work, a book that frequently discloses to a king what calculating and sometimes brutal measures he must carry out to preserve the state and the common good."

Propaganda

"Propaganda" comes from the Latin verb "propagare," meaning to propagate or spread. It was first used in 1622 by the Jesuits who embraced the term propaganda in the title of their new organization: Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, founded by Pope Gregory XV. Propaganda and its counterpart censorship have long since been a perpetual part of the western socio-political landscape.

Wickipedia defines propaganda as, "A type of message aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of people. Often, instead of impartially providing information, propaganda can be deliberately misleading, or using logical fallacies, which, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.

What separates propagandism from "normal" communication is how the message attempts to shape opinion or behavior, often with subtle, insidious and other characteristics.

Gabriel Tarde’s Laws of Imitation (1890) and Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1897) were two of the first codifications of "modern" propaganda techniques.

Propaganda wars

Journalist Walter Lippman, who wrote Public Opinion in 1922, worked with psychologist Edward Bernays, a nephew of Freud, developing propagandism early in the 20th century.

During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then President, Woodrow Wilson to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war and encourage censorship of the American press.

The war propaganda campaign of Lippman and Bernays produced an intense anti-German hysteria in six months. Bernays coined the terms "group mind" and "engineering consent," important concepts in practical propaganda.

World War II saw an expanded use of propaganda as a weapon of war on all sides: Hitler’s propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the British Political Warfare Executive, and the United States Office of War Information.

Goebbels is famous for engineering Hitler’s rise to power. The German propaganda machine was as important as the industrial and economic engines that prepared the German people for a war against the world. Only two decades earlier, Germany suffered deeply from both military defeat and economic collapse.

The education system in Nazi Germany was co-opted to indoctrinate German youth with the National Socialist Teachers’ Union. In 1937, 97 percent of all German teachers were members. Public rallies, media control and the active suppression of dissent combined as a hammer to forge the German people’s mind.

Similarly U.S. government propagandists, propaganda agencies and the media here at home were in overdrive to promote "the war effort." But the real show began after WWII concluded.

Operation Paperclip

Perhaps more famous for rocket scientists, Operation Paperclip was how the U.S. imported German scientists at the end of WWII. Astounded by the sheer scope of the German technical and scientific accomplishments and realizing the danger of letting German technology fall into Russian hands, this covert program to evacuate key German technicians and their families was initiated.

By 1955, more than 760 German scientists had been granted citizenship in the U.S. and given prominent positions in the American scientific community. Many had been longtime members of the Nazi party and the Gestapo, had conducted experiments on humans at concentration camps, had used slave labor and had committed other war crimes. Paperclip acquired Germany’s most accomplished scientists in the fields of rocketry, aeronautics, chemistry, fuel development, optics, medicine, eugenics, intelligence and propaganda.

The best-known example is Wehrner von Braun. Though suspected of having used slave labor and having received honors from Himmler for excellent service to the war effort, he became the father of American rocketry.

The achievements of rocket science is a source of national pride, but the ability to control how and what you think has been kept a little quieter. Among the Paperclip gang were numerous propagandists who were farmed out to various social science research facilities, primarily located in America’s universities.

Infu$ion

"The primary nexus between government and social science is an economic one," wrote Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford.

In the first decade after World War II, communications studies crystallized into a distinct academic field, the science of communications—journalism. Propaganda and intelligence agencies and the military provided major funding for the field. The National Science Foundation (NSF) reported that, in 1952, over 96 percent of all reported funding for social science research came from the U.S. military. Private money also came from the Ford, Rockefeller and Russell Sage Foundations. Nelson Rockefeller served as Eisenhower’s principal advisor and strategist for psychological operations during 1954-55.

Propaganda, euphemistically renamed the science of communications, advanced like rocketry during the post-war decade from a generally aimed launch to a precision-targeted delivery system.

The mockingbirds

In 1948, Frank Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to run the project within the industry. Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP), which later became the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA in 1951.

In 1977, Rolling Stone magazine alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. In August 1952, the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special Operations (the espionage division of the CIA) were merged to form the Directorate of Plans (DP). Frank Wisner became head of this new organization and Richard Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird was now the responsibility of the DP.

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 key newspapers and wire agencies. According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts".

After Richard Bissell lost his post as Director of Plans in 1962, Tracy Barnes took over the running of Mockingbird. In June 1965, Desmond FitzGerald was appointed as head of the Directorate for Plans. He then took charge of Mockingbird.

Further details of Operation Mockingbird were revealed as a result of the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. According to the Congressional report published in 1976:

"The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets."

Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

According to Carl Bernstein, over 400 reporters and editors were working for the CIA as part of Operation Mockingbird.

Our virtual world

The first technological leap in propaganda came with the invention of the printing press during the Protestant Reformation era; Christianity was forever changed.

During WWI the print media was the state of the art with news traveling from the telegraph to the newspaper presses.

By WWII, radio became the realtime purveyor of news.

The trance-inducing technology of TV was developed as the propagandist’s tool of choice from the later 50s through the 80s.

Today we are in an instant, multi-media, global communication age. Information is overwhelming. No sane human can keep up with the pace of information coming at them today, let alone verify its authenticity.

Hollywood can make almost any bizarre concept seem real. Computer generation makes anything imaginable visually and audibly possible. The science of mind-altering frequency generation and subliminal suggestion can literally reach the core of your being.

Even with such advances in the propagandist’s art, we are still primarily subject to the classical, rhetorical diatribes of the spin-doctors. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman all ride the propaganda rails.

Is O’Reilly ever deliberately misleading, using logical fallacies, which, while sometimes convincing, lack validity? Does Rush engage in patriotic flag-waving, glittering generalities, intentional vagueness and oversimplification of complex issues, rationalization and the introduction of unrelated red herring issues? Do Chomsky and Goodman use appealing, simple slogans, stereotyping, testimonials from authority figures or celebrities and unstated assumptions? Both the left and right gatekeepers encourage readers or viewers to "jump on the bandwagon."

You are a mind control subject. If you don’t learn how to take control of your mind, someone else will.